If you're looking for the story of a young, flashy startup that bursts onto the scene, grabs the big headlines, and grows at a break-neck pace — Atlassian isn't one of those stories. Instead, the company has been humming along for 18 years, growing into a multi-billion dollar business. What's even more interesting than the bottom line is all the ways in which the company has run contrary to conventional startup wisdom.

You've likely heard of the company's storied lack of a traditional sales force. But in this exclusive interview with Jay Simons, we uncover plenty of other outliers in Atlassian's story. There's the company’s genesis in Australia — far outside of Silicon Valley’s center of gravity. From the unusual dual-CEO leadership structure and a second product launch in just their second year, to how they relied on "product-led growth" before anyone coined the phrase, and focused on low pricing and self-service before bottoms-up SaaS was widespread, there's plenty of examples of how Atlassian sidestepped more typical moves and carved out a new path.

Unpacking 5 of Atlassian’s Most Unconventional Company-Building Moves

Now a partner at Bond and on the boards of Hubspot and Zapier, at Atlassian Simons had a long run as President, and as he puts it, the company covered a lot of distance during his 12-year tenure. Quite a few years ago, Simons spoke to our First Round CEO summit on his team-building philosophy, including the eight traits of successful teams. In our most recent conversation with Simons, he pulls back the curtain and unpacks several of Atlassian's atypical moves.

"Constant willingness to reinvent the wheel takes a shit ton of courage and energy. It’s way easier to just rip the page out of the playbook and follow the script," says Simons. “It was really rare for us to just do something that works somewhere else. We always began culturally with the question around, ‘Why is it done that way?’ I want to understand it first and maybe there’s room for not just incremental innovation, but real invention that can make a big difference for us.”

Today on The Review, Simons gets incredibly tactical in outlining each of these moves and more, including pulling off Atlassian "land and expand" enterprise strategy and even diving into why HipChat lost to Slack. It's a must-read for go-to-market and revenue leaders, but there's also plenty of spot-on advice for any company-builder on architecting a product and culture that’s rooted in first-principles thinking.

Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing.

-The Review editors

Resources worth sharing: 

• This Twitter thread of 15 razors and rules to help simplify decisions.
• Lessons in this collection of advice for newly-minted product managers.
• Doist's Fadeke Adegbuyi on how to complete your own annual review.

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